Faculty & Programs

Lehigh University’s Research Translation AcceLUrator was highlighted at Carnegie Mellon University’s 2025 Startup Week, a multi-day celebration of entrepreneurship, innovation, and frontier technology hosted by CMU’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. From September 23 to 26, the event brought together roughly 2,000 academics, researchers, investors, founders, and university leaders for over 25 events to explore strategies for accelerating innovation and advancing regional tech ecosystems.

The Lehigh University community came together for the 2025 Faculty Appreciation Banquet to celebrate excellence in teaching, research, advising, and service across disciplines. The annual event recognized 18 faculty members for their contributions during the 2024–2025 academic year, honoring newly appointed professorships, long-service milestones, and award recipients.

Israel E. Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional honors in the field of engineering.

Lehigh University’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) is launching two new courses focused on the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Industrial Engineering (IE) and Operations Research (OR), reinforcing the department’s leadership in preparing students and professionals for a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Together, these offerings put practical skills into action with guidance from proven methods, emphasizing impactful and ethical use of AI in complex service and industrial systems.

As the world marks the 40th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, former NASA astronaut and professor Terry J. Hart ’68, who directs Lehigh University’s MS-AERO program, has been featured in national and international media, offering firsthand insight into the tragedy and its lasting impact on spaceflight.

Lehigh University’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) announces the release of Practical Nonconvex Nonsmooth Optimization, a new book by ISE faculty members Frank E. Curtis and Daniel P. Robinson. Published by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the book provides a comprehensive yet accessible treatment of optimization problems involving continuous functions that may be nonconvex, nonsmooth, or both.

Brian D. Davison, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at Lehigh University, has been appointed the Daniel E. ’39 and Patricia M. Smith Endowed Chair, effective November 1, 2025.

The appointment marks the first time this endowed chair has been held by a faculty member in the CSE department. 

Aditya Aiyer, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Lehigh University, has been selected as an Early-Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 

Aiyer is among six researchers named to the fellowship’s Offshore Energy Safety track for 2025-2027. Fellows receive a $76,000 award and mentoring support to advance research during the critical pre-tenure phase of their careers.